Category: Family

Today my Uncle Avrum got up from shiva, the seven day mourning period when the immediate relatives of the deceased sit on low chairs as friends, family and acquaintances pay respects. Continue reading “The symbolic act of a walk”→

“Come on, Sammy. Come and play piano for Deena.” The mom asks of her 8-year old son.

“No.”

”Come on, Sammy. Come and play. Deena wants to hear you play the 18th Century March.”

I do?

“I’m busy.”

”Sammy, you come here in 2 minutes.”

“You come here in 2 minutes,” Sammy mocks his mother’s Asian accent.

“Oh, he’s very shy,” his mother tells me. “He is smart, has lots of friends…”

Finally Sammy runs into the living room, sits down at the piano and plays the boring 18th Century March very well. Then, face down, he makes a quick get-away, before either of us can say anything to him.

We go into the study where Sammy is playing computer games. He stares at the screen, trying to ignore our existence.

He’s a teenager at the age of 8, I keep thinking.

She scruffs his hair. He automatically moves away.

Does he avoid her touch? He’s only 8. When did he start doing that?

She retains her composure through our meeting, giving nonchalant excuses for his behavior. Talking easily about their need for a babysitter – someone to come in the afternoons and “help” him with his homework and piano practice.

Uh-huh…

Are we truly convinced a babysitter is what this family needs?

Written March 14, 2007 as part of a creative writing course with the thoughtful and caring teacher and writer Paul Belserene.

I wrote this piece on March 28, 2007 about my little sister when I lived on the opposite side of the world as her. It was written as part of a creative writing course with the thoughtful and caring writer and teacher Paul Belserene.

So what do you do with 10 year olds when they say things that are not true when they do not understand the gravity of there words?

I live in a small sleepy suburb just West of Boston, MA. It is a bedroom community where the executive elite of Boston reside. It is a wealthy town. It is quiet. It is not usually in the public eye.

Wednesday morning Sudbury caught the attention of most of America. Why would anyone care about this town? Well, 1 street over from my house a man was arrested on account of trying to be a terrorist. I say trying because he attempted to join 3 terrorist organizations that would not let him in. And in a country where a weapon is as easy to buy as alcohol he was not able to buy his semiautomatic rifles he wanted for attacking the local mall.

So … good the Fed caught the man.

Well of course as parents we have been wondering what would come back home from school after such excitement.

We have some neighbors who have moved here from Iran. Lovely people. She is doing research on autistic children and he resigned from his high level job to come support her in the US. They have 2 children and one is in class with my son. So on the way home from school, as the kids rode the bus, another boy (happens to belong to our synagogue) decided to tell those around him that this Iranian boy’s father is a terrorist. We are not sure the boy heard on the bus, however, when they got off at the bus stop a couple of girls decided to inform him that this boy was saying this on the bus. Of course he got quite upset.

In the end my wife called the mother (she did not know anything about it even 2 hours later – he did not tell her) and the principal.

So my thing is this, the boy who is spreading these rumors is Jewish. My kids are Jewish. They are all under 10. How do you teach children about Lashon Hara? My favorite tale is the one of the child who is telling stories is asked to take a pillow of feathers and to run as fast as he can without dropping a feather. The moral of the story is that your words are like the feathers, once they are out of the bag and carried by the wind they are impossible to gather and put back in. It is a good tale but does it work?

(The facts in this post are taken from the Arutz 7 article which you can access here.)

You’ve gotta admit it blows your mind, at least a little, this story.

This poor man lost his wife and three of his seven kids when one of our crazy local terrorists came into their house in the Shomron yishuv (settlement) of Itamar and killed them. (Um, just btw, how in the world can a religion think that’s a good thing?)

The people killed in his family that day:

Rachel, his wife, 40

Neriah, 15

Tzvikah, 12

Avishai, 5

How heartbreaking. Since this horrid incident in June 2002, Boaz Shabo remarried. His new wife, Hila, and her five children moved in with Boaz and his two unmarried children.

Anyway, on the second day of Sukkot (so, around a week ago), Hila gave birth to triplets! Two girls and a boy.

We can’t know what a person deserves in this world so I hesitate to say that Boaz deserves this blessing, but it just seems so fitting after he lost three sons that he should have triplets. He said, “Though it’s impossible to forget those who were killed, this is a very joyous occasion for all of us.”

It is springtime. It is Pesach time. As a child, my sisters and I would scour our house for crumbs, which might have fallen from a plate we held while reading or playing.

We would take each and every one of my father’s (may he rest in peace) books off the shelves and dust the front cover, then the back ones and finally do a quick wipe of some of those large Talmudic pages.

He was a bibliophile, my father was, and our task was to ensure his collection of 10,000 Sepharim (Jewish texts) were spotless, purified for Pesach.

I, like many of you I’m sure, feel a depth of warmth inside when I think about the Sedarim of years gone by, especially those of my early years. My Mother, God bless her, would set the table for us – as if we were royalty -complete with the Passover plate and the funny looking shank bone and terribly distasteful marror – the bitter herbs.

Later on in the evening when I would eat the marror sandwich and was instructed to remember: “All their labor was carried out under conditions of excessive force,” (Exodus 1:14) – in reference to the terrible plight of our Jewish ancestors – all I could do was wrinkle up my face, frantically reach for a glass of cold water and swear off horse radish (the main ingredient) for another year.

I was the youngest of five and therefore had the distinct honour of saying the Ma N’ishtana (The Four Questions). How special this moment was, as being the youngest then generally meant being the last in line for most things. One year I decided I would learn this whimsical prayer in Yiddish – Far v’us is the nacht f ’in Pesach, un’dish fin alla nacht fin a gunz yor?” (Why is this night different from all other nights?). I was so very proud of myself.

I also remember thinking about my great-grandparents in Poland, and the trusting smiles on their face when they were little and perhaps lucky enough to be the youngest. I thought about their shtetls – Slipia and Biesechien – and the joy they and their neighbours must have felt sitting around the Pesach table.

Then I grew up and realized that Pesach was more than just a holiday with fanciful rituals and ritualistic items to compel the children to ask questions. I began to understand that those shtetls I had remembered as a child, no longer existed and wondered what happened to the little ones who once had happily asked the F’eer Kashus (The Four Questions).

It became clearer that freedom is a sister to slavery and reclining like a Queen or King (as we are instructed to do at the Seder) is mirrored by the plight of the poor and tattered who are searching for an open door where the people inside are bidding them to enter, by the words: “those who are hungry let them come and eat.” The season has changed and we have joined our loved ones and friends at the Passover table.

As children we should play, and incessantly ask questions: Why? Why?

Why? Children are supposed to do that. Good luck with your answers! As we get older, we can’t help but remember those Jews who died building the store houses for Pharaoh; who perished in Auschwitz while quietly singing the promising prayer – Day’einu; and those who are suffering this very moment through poverty in Israel, genocide in Sudan, and loneliness and hopelessness on the streets of Toronto.

But, as adults we must also sit back at the Seder, taste the sweet charoset and as free people, dramatically and with fanfare, tell and retell the story of the Exodus, recollecting how we found our way back home to Israel, and discovered the uniqueness of the Jewish people and our ability to create extraordinary communities and congregations such as Habonim.